Poet Celia Laighton Thaxter, who so beautifully evoked the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire, and who welcomed such 19th-century literary and artistic figures as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sarah Orne Jewett, William Morris Hunt, and Childe Hassam to Appledore Island, possessed her own artistic gifts as well. Her hand-illustrated books, watercolors, and painted china helped to financially support her family, but their superb grace and naturalistic detail also reveal, argues curator Sharon Stephan, that "art was Celia's passion." This book, with 188 color reproductions and photographs of Thaxter's art, introduces readers to the full range of Thaxter's art and, where paired, her writing as well.